September 1, 2025
Monday of the Twenty-second Week in Ordinary Time
Lectionary: 431
Reading 1
We do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters,
about those who have fallen asleep,
so that you may not grieve like the rest, who have no hope.
For if we believe that Jesus died and rose,
so too will God, through Jesus,
bring with him those who have fallen asleep.
Indeed, we tell you this, on the word of the Lord,
that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord,
will surely not precede those who have fallen asleep.
For the Lord himself, with a word of command,
with the voice of an archangel and with the trumpet of God,
will come down from heaven,
and the dead in Christ will rise first.
Then we who are alive, who are left,
will be caught up together with them in the clouds
to meet the Lord in the air.
Thus we shall always be with the Lord.
Therefore, console one another with these words.
Responsorial Psalm
Psalm
96:1 and 3, 4-5, 11-12, 13
R. (13b) The Lord comes to judge the earth.
Sing to the LORD a new song;
sing to the LORD, all you lands.
Tell his glory among the nations;
among all peoples, his wondrous deeds.
R. The Lord comes to judge the earth.
For great is the LORD and highly to be praised;
awesome is he, beyond all gods.
For all the gods of the nations are things of nought,
but the LORD made the heavens.
R. The Lord comes to judge the earth.
Let the heavens be glad and the earth rejoice;
let the sea and what fills it resound;
let the plains be joyful and all that is in them!
Then shall all the trees of the forest exult.
R. The Lord comes to judge the earth.
Before the LORD, for he comes;
for he comes to rule the earth.
He shall rule the world with justice
and the peoples with his constancy.
R. The Lord comes to judge the earth.
Alleluia
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me;
he has sent me to bring glad tidings to the poor.
R. Alleluia, alleluia.
Gospel
Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had grown up,
and went according to his custom
into the synagogue on the sabbath day.
He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah.
He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has anointed me
to bring glad tidings to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives
and recovery of sight to the blind,
to let the oppressed go free,
and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.
Rolling up the scroll,
he handed it back to the attendant and sat down,
and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him.
He said to them,
"Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing."
And all spoke highly of him
and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth.
They also asked, "Is this not the son of Joseph?"
He said to them, "Surely you will quote me this proverb,
'Physician, cure yourself,' and say, 'Do here in your native place
the things that we heard were done in Capernaum.'"
And he said,
"Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted in his own native place.
Indeed, I tell you,
there were many widows in Israel in the days of Elijah
when the sky was closed for three and a half years
and a severe famine spread over the entire land.
It was to none of these that Elijah was sent,
but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon.
Again, there were many lepers in Israel
during the time of Elisha the prophet;
yet not one of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian."
When the people in the synagogue heard this,
they were all filled with fury.
They rose up, drove him out of the town,
and led him to the brow of the hill
on which their town had been built, to hurl him down headlong.
But he passed through the midst of them and went away.
https://bible.usccb.org/bible/readings/090125.cfm
Commentary on 1
Thessalonians 4:13-18
The early Christians, including the Thessalonians, were
convinced that Jesus would return in their lifetime. They were consequently
upset about the fate of their brothers and sisters who had already died. What
would happen to them if they were not around to greet the Lord when he came?
So here Paul takes up the practice among the Thessalonians
of mourning excessively for their dead, a reaction deriving from the stress
placed by the community on their belief that the Second Coming of Christ was
going to happen very soon, definitely in their lifetime. But now people were
dying off before this took place: what was going to happen to them? Did they
think that the dead, in accordance with Jewish and Greek belief, went to a
place for the dead (Hebrew, Sheol or Greek, Hades)
from which there was no escape? And so they would not be around when Jesus came
to take all the Christians to himself?
The Apostle reminds them of the Christian doctrine of the
resurrection of the dead in Christ. On the basis of Christ’s teaching, he
affirms that the resurrection of the dead is to precede the Second Coming.
Those who are alive at the time of the latter will not have the advantage over
the dead of being the first witnesses to it. On the contrary, the Lord will
first command the dead to rise; the living will then join them and both groups
will be witnesses of the Parousia.
The doctrine spoken of here is to be remembered when there
are more deaths in the community. Since Paul does not know the time of the
Parousia, he aligns himself with the Thessalonians in the hope of living to
that day, i.e. within the first Christian generation. In his mind such a
possibility seems not to have been excluded by the teaching of Jesus himself.
That is the background, now to the reading proper. The
converts in Thessalonica had obviously been worried about friends and relatives
who had died and would not be there to see the coming of the Lord. Replying to
their questions, Paul affirms the fundamental doctrine of the resurrection so
as to strengthen their faith and hope.
Paul wants the Thessalonians to be quite certain about the
fate of those who have “fallen asleep”. This euphemism for death was common in
both the Old and New Testaments and in Greek literature. It was natural, then,
to refer to ‘resurrection’ to new life or from death as an ‘awakening’. For the
Christian, sleep is a particularly apt metaphor for death, because of its
finality.
Some of the Thessalonians seem to have misunderstood the
meaning of the Parousia and thought all believers would live until Christ
returned. When some died, the question then arose, “Will those who have died
have part in that great day?”
But, says Paul, there is no need to grieve over them, as
others do who have no hope. Inscriptions on tombs and references in literature
show that first-century pagans viewed death with horror, as the end of
everything. The Christian attitude was in strong contrast (see 1 Cor 15:55-57;
Phil 1:21-23).
For since we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even
so, through Jesus, God will bring with him those who have died. [i.e.
those who have died as Christians]
The resurrection of Jesus is absolutely essential for
Christian belief in a future life. As Paul wrote to the Christians of Corinth:
…if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation is
in vain and your faith is in vain…If Christ has not been raised, your faith is
futile, and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have died in Christ
have perished. If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all
people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the
first fruits of those who have died. (1 Cor 15:14,17-20)
Paul can also state from the Lord’s own teaching, namely,
that those who are still alive when the Lord comes will not have any advantage
over those who have fallen asleep, that is, who have already died. The
Thessalonians had evidently been concerned that those among them who died would
miss their place in the great events when the Lord came, and Paul assures them
that this will not be the case. There is no exact reference in the written
Gospels for this saying of Jesus. Perhaps Paul is relying here on traditions he
had received from others, but which did not find their way into the Gospel
texts. There must have been many such sayings.
Paul next speaks about those believers who are still alive
at Christ’s Second Coming:
…we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the
Lord…
‘We’ does not necessarily mean that Paul thought he himself
would be alive then. He often identified himself with those he wrote to or
about. Elsewhere he says that God will raise “us” at that time (1 Cor 6:14; 2
Cor 4:14). If he is including himself among those who will be present at the
Parousia, it is more by hope or desire rather than by conviction.
The Apostle then gives an image of the Parousia using
traditional apocalyptic imagery for a divine intervention. It is not to be
taken as a literal description of an experience that is totally beyond our
imagination.
For the Lord himself, with a cry of command, with the
archangel’s call and with the sound of God’s trumpet, will descend from heaven…
The only named archangel in the Scripture is Michael (Jude
9; Dan 10:13). In Luke, Gabriel is simply called an angel, and similarly, so is
Raphael in the Book of Tobit. Later tradition calls them all ‘archangels’. The
‘trumpet’, together with voice and clouds, were traditional signs that
accompanied a theophany, a divine manifestation, such as that at Mount Sinai.
They were later adopted as conventional elements in apocalyptic literature, as
for example, in Matthew’s description of the coming of the Son of Man at the
end of time (Matt 24:29).
Then, in a reassuring remark, Paul affirms that:
…the dead in Christ will rise first. Then we who are
alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet
the Lord in the air…
This is the only place in the New Testament where a
‘rapture’—being caught up or taken up to God—is clearly referred to. Although
some hold that such experiences will be secret, Paul seems to be describing
something open and public, with loud voices and a trumpet blast.
Contrary to their fears, Paul says that:
…we will be with the Lord forever.
Of all the details given here: that the dead will answer the
summons by returning to life, that they and the living will be taken to meet
the Lord, and that they will accompany him to the judgement with which the
eternal kingdom begins, the essential one is the last—eternal life with Christ.
That is the ‘salvation’, the ‘glory’, the ‘Kingdom’ that Jesus shares among his
chosen followers.
And, Paul concludes:
Therefore encourage one another with these words.
The primary purpose of the whole passage is not to give a
chronology of future events, though that is involved, but to above all urge the
Thessalonian community to mutual encouragement.
As mentioned, it is not necessary to take the scenario here
described too literally; in fact, it would be quite wrong to do so. It consists
of traditional apocalyptic and scriptural language to describe the
indescribable—our future life with God after our death.
Very soon in the life of the Church people began to think
less and less about this problem. We need to remember that this Letter is a
very early Church writing. By the time we get to the Gospels, this anxiety has
passed and the concern is now about how to live in a time of uncertain and
presumably lengthy or indefinite duration.
But the warnings we saw in Matthew’s Gospel last week still
remain valid. The critical issue is not the when or the how of the Lord’s final
coming, but the when and the how of our leaving this earth. Will I be ready? Am
I ready now?
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Commentary on Luke
4:16-30
Today we begin the reading from Luke’s Gospel, which will
bring us to the end of the Church year. We have already gone through Matthew’s
and Mark’s, and John’s Gospel has been spread through various parts of the
year, especially during the Advent, Christmas, Lent and Easter seasons.
Luke’s Gospel is a companion volume to the Acts of the
Apostles, and the language and structure of these two books indicate that both
were written by the same person. They are addressed to the same individual,
Theophilus, and Acts refers to Luke’s Gospel. Luke’s Gospel and Acts could be
considered as volume 1 and 2 of the same book.
Luke presents the works and teachings of Jesus that are
especially important for understanding the way of salvation. Its scope is
complete from the birth of Christ to his ascension and it appeals to both Jews
and Gentiles.
Today, we take up Luke’s Gospel at the beginning of Jesus’
public life (chap 4). After his baptism by John the Baptist:
Jesus, in the power of the Spirit, returned to Galilee…
(Luke 4:14)
As we know, Galilee is the northern province of Palestine
and his home province. Already people were talking about him everywhere.
Now, as our reading opens, we find him in Nazareth, the
small town in Galilee where he grew up. From the verses immediately preceding,
it does not seem that Jesus actually began his ministry in Nazareth. The event
described here may not have taken place until a year later. One suggestion (NIV
Bible) is that all that is described in John’s Gospel between 1:19 to 4:42
took place between the temptation in the desert and the moving north to Galilee
(see Luke 4:13-14).
But Luke has arranged the structure of his Gospel so that
Jesus will begin his public life in Nazareth, and will gradually proceed
southwards towards his goal, Jerusalem, without turning back. In the other
Synoptics, he moves around Galilee in all directions, and John suggests that he
made a number of visits to Jerusalem during his public life.
The Jerusalem Bible suggests that our
passage today actually combines three distinct parts:
- vv
16-22 Jesus is honoured: occurring at the time indicated by Matthew 4:13;
- vv
23-24 Jesus astonishing his audience: the visit of which Matthew and Mark
speak;
- vv
25-30 the life of Jesus threatened: not mentioned by Matthew or Mark and
to be placed towards the end of the Galilean ministry.
In this way Luke presents an introductory tableau which is a
summary and symbol of Christ’s great offer and of its contemptuous rejection by
his own people.
As the reading opens we find Jesus in the town synagogue. It
is a Sabbath day. He gets up to read the Scripture and comments on it. The
ruler of the synagogue could authorise any adult Jew to read the Scripture
lesson. The passage he reads is full of significance. It comes from the prophet
Isaiah, and Jesus’ reading of it amounts to a manifesto or what we might call
today a ‘mission statement’. ‘Books’ in those days were in the form of scrolls,
and the Scriptures were kept in a special place in the synagogue and given to
the reader by an attendant. Jesus may have chosen the passage himself or it may
have been assigned for that day.
But it is more than just a mission statement. As he reads,
it becomes clear that the whole statement is about Jesus himself:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me…
This has already been confirmed during his baptism in the
river Jordan when “the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a
dove” and a voice was heard to say:
You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.
(Luke 3:22)
Next Jesus, still reading from Isaiah, says:
…because he has anointed me…
In saying this, he is making an unequivocal claim to be the
Messiah or the Christ, the long-awaited liberating King of Israel. The word
‘Messiah’, translated into Greek as Christos, means someone who is
anointed with oil (we call the oil in baptism and confirmation ‘chrism’). And a
person was made king by having oil poured over his head (remember how David was
anointed king). Jesus, of course, was not literally anointed, but had been
figuratively ‘anointed’ by the coming of the Spirit on him during his baptism.
‘Anointing’ is our equivalent of ‘coronation’, symbolised by the putting of a
crown on the new king.
Then comes the mission of this King:
-to bring good news to the poor,
-to proclaim release to the captives,
-recovery of sight to the blind,
-to set free those who are oppressed,
-to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.
There is nothing here of restoring the glories of Israel,
nothing about conquering enemies and laying waste their lands. No, it is about
letting the poor of this world hear the Good News of God’s love for them. It is
about healing and reconciliation. It is about liberating those who are tied
down by any form of enslavement. It is about helping people to see clearly the
true meaning of life. It is about restoring wholeness to people’s lives and to
societies. It is about the inauguration of the Kingdom by its King.
It is, in short, the whole picture of Jesus that will unfold
in the pages of Luke, a Gospel which focuses on the poor and vulnerable, a
Gospel of tenderness and compassion, a Gospel of the Spirit and of joy, a
Gospel of prayer and healing.
It is about proclaiming “the year of the Lord’s favor”. This
refers to the Messianic age when salvation would be proclaimed. Isaiah, in the
original text, is alluding to the Year of Jubilee, when every 50 years slaves
were set free, debts were cancelled and ancestral lands were returned to the
original family. Isaiah was thinking mainly of freedom from Babylonian
captivity, but Jesus was speaking of liberation across the board of human
living.
As he finished the reading, Jesus put down the scroll and
said:
Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.
And the townspeople who thought they knew him so well were
overawed by the wisdom with which he spoke. This positive reaction to Jesus is
a favourite theme in Luke.
Rhetorically they asked:
Is not this Joseph’s son?
But they were wrong. He was not Joseph’s son; he was the son
of Mary and of the Father, the divine Word sharing our ‘flesh’ (as suggested
above, this event may have occurred on a second visit).
And this in turn leads us to the third section of the reading
which provides an unexpected turn of events and is more in harmony with the
later part of Jesus’ public life. Jesus’ hearers were surprised at the way he
spoke, but they were not moved to change. After all, he was ‘just’ the son of
Joseph, and someone they knew so well could have nothing to say to them. At the
same time Jesus says they, his own townspeople, must be wondering why he is not
doing the things in Nazareth that he was doing in places like Capernaum.
Capernaum, apparently a sizeable town, was where Peter lived
and Jesus made his house, the centre out of which he did his missionary work in
Galilee. A modern church now stands over the ruins of a 5th century basilica on
the supposed site of Peter’s house and there is a 4th century synagogue nearby.
The reason for the townspeople’s non-acceptance of Jesus is
that they do not really accept him for what he is. He reminds them that
prophets are seldom accepted in their own place. Familiarity blinds people to
their message. Their attitude was: “I know who he is and he has nothing to say
to me.” Jesus then gives two rather provocative examples:
- During
a great famine in the time of the prophet Elijah, Elijah was sent to help,
not his fellow Israelites, but a poor widow in Zarephath, near Sidon, in
non-Jewish territory. Sidon was one of the oldest Phoenician cities on the
Mediterranean coast and about 33 km north of Tyre. (Later, Jesus would
heal the daughter of a gentile woman here.)
- In
the time of the prophet Elisha, there were many lepers in Israel, but
Elisha was sent to cure Naaman, a gentile general from Syria.
God’s reaching out to Gentiles through his prophets sets the
stage for the Gentiles to receive the message of the Prophet Jesus, which is so
much a theme of Luke’s writings. These remarks so angered the people of
Nazareth that they dragged Jesus to the brow of a hill with the intention of
throwing him down, but:
…he passed through the midst of them and went on his way.
Whether he did this miraculously or from the sheer power of
his personality is not clear. In any case, his time had not yet come.
Prophetic voices being rejected by their own is a phenomenon
only too common in our own day. And it was something Jesus foretold would
happen to his followers, simply for being his followers and proclaiming his
vision of life. In the meantime, let us make Jesus’ mission statement our own.
It is what being a Christian means.
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Monday, September 1,
2025
Opening Prayer
Almighty God, every good thing comes from You.
Fill our hearts with love for You, increase our faith,
and by Your constant care protect the good you have given us. We ask this
through our Lord Jesus Christ, Your Son, who lives and reigns with You and the
Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Gospel Reading - Luke 4: 16-30
Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had grown
up, and went according to his custom into the synagogue on the sabbath day. He
stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the
scroll and found the passage where it was written: The Spirit of the Lord is
upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has
sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to
let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.
Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and the
eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him. He said to them,
"Today this Scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing." And all
spoke highly of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his
mouth. They also asked, "Is this not the son of Joseph?" He said to
them, "Surely you will quote me this proverb, 'Physician, cure yourself,'
and say, 'Do here in your native place the things that we heard were done in
Capernaum.'" And he said, "Amen, I say to you, no prophet is accepted
in his own native place. Indeed, I tell you, there were many widows in Israel
in the days of Elijah when the sky was closed for three and a half years and a
severe famine spread over the entire land. It was to none of these that Elijah
was sent, but only to a widow in Zarephath in the land of Sidon. Again, there
were many lepers in Israel during the time of Elisha the prophet; yet not one
of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian." When the people in the
synagogue heard this, they were all filled with fury. They rose up, drove him
out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town had
been built, to hurl him down headlong. But he passed through the midst of them
and went away.
Reflection
Today we begin the meditation on the Gospel
of Luke, which will extend three months until the end of the liturgical year.
Today’s Gospel speaks about Jesus’ visit to Nazareth and the presentation of
His program to the people of the synagogue. At first the people were amazed.
But immediately, when they became aware that Jesus wanted to accept all,
without excluding anyone, people rebelled and wanted to kill Him.
•
Luke 4: 16-19: The proposal of Jesus. Urged by
the Holy Spirit, Jesus returns to Galilee (Lk 4: 14) and begins to announce the
Good News of the Kingdom of God. He goes to the community, teaches in the
Synagogue and arrives in Nazareth, where He had grown up. He was returning to
the community in which He had participated since He was small and for thirty
years. The following Saturday, as was the custom, Jesus went to the synagogue
to participate in the celebration, and He stands up to read. He chooses the
text of Isaiah which speaks about the poor, of prisoners, of the blind and the
oppressed (Is 61: 1-2). This text is an image of the situation of the people of
Galilee at the time of Jesus. The experience which Jesus had of God, the Father
of Love, gave Him a new perspective to evaluate the reality. In the name of
God, Jesus takes a stand to defend the life of His people and, with the words
of Isaiah, He defines His mission:
•
(1) to announce the Good News to the poor;
•
(2) to proclaim liberty to captives;
•
(3) to give sight to the blind;
•
(4) to release the oppressed, and taking the
ancient tradition of the prophets;
•
(5) to proclaim “a year of grace from the Lord.”
He proclaims the Jubilee Year!
•
In the Bible, the "Jubilee Year” was an
important law. Every seven years, at the beginning (Dt 15: 1; Lev 25: 3) it was
necessary to restore the land to the clan of origin. All had to be able to
return to their own property; and this way they prevented the formation of
large estates, and families were guaranteed their livelihood. It was also
necessary to forgive their debts and to redeem the people who were slaves. (Dt
15: 1-18). It was not easy to have the Jubilee Year every seven years (cf. Jer
34: 8-16). After the exile, it was decided to have it every fifty years (Lev
25: 8-12). The objective of the Jubilee was and continues to be to re-establish
the rights of the poor, to accept the excluded and to reintegrate them into the
society to live together with others. The Jubilee was a legal instrument to
return to the original sense of the Law of God. This was an occasion offered by
God to make a revision of the path being followed, to discover and to correct the
errors and to start again from the beginning. Jesus begins His preaching
proclaiming a Jubilee: “A year of grace from the Lord.”
•
Luke 4: 20-22: To unite the Bible and Life.
Having finished the reading, Jesus comments on the text of Isaiah and says,
“This text is being fulfilled today even while you are listening!” Taking the
words of Isaiah as His own, Jesus gives them a full and definitive sense and He
declares Himself Messiah who comes to fulfill the prophecy. This way of
interpreting the text provokes a reaction of disbelief on the part of those who
were in the synagogue. They were scandalized and did not want to know anything
about Him. They did not accept that Jesus was the Messiah announced by Isaiah.
They said, “Is He not the son of Joseph?” They were scandalized because Jesus
spoke about accepting the poor, the blind and the oppressed. The people do not
accept Jesus’ proposal. And, thus when He presents the idea of accepting the
excluded, He Himself is excluded.
•
Luke 4: 23-30: To overcome the limits of race.
In order to help the community to overcome the scandal and to help them
understand that His proposal formed part of tradition. Jesus tells two stories
known in the Bible, the story of Elijah and the one of Elisha. Both stories
criticize the narrow-mindedness of the people of Nazareth. Elijah was sent to
the widow of Zarephath (1 Kgs 17: 7-16). Elisha was sent to take care of the
Syrian (2 Kgs 5: 14). Here arises Luke’s concern, who wants to show that
openness stems from Jesus. Jesus had the same difficulty which the communities
at the time of Luke were having. But the call of Jesus did not calm people
down. Quite the contrary! The stories of Elijah and Elisha produced even
greater anger. The community of Nazareth reaches the point of wanting to kill
Jesus. But He remains calm. The anger of others does not succeed in drawing Him
away from His own path. Luke tells us that it is difficult to overcome the
mentality of privilege and of narrowmindedness.
•
It is important to notice the details used in
the Old Testament. Jesus quotes the text of Isaiah up to the point where it
says, “to proclaim a year of grace from the Lord.” He does not quote the rest
of the sentence which says, “and a day of vengeance from our God.” The people
of Nazareth throw stones at Jesus because He pretends to be the Messiah,
because He wants to accept the excluded and because He has omitted the sentence
about vengeance. They wanted the day of Yahweh to be a day of vengeance against
the oppressors of the people. In this case, the coming of the Kingdom would not
have been a true change or conversion of the system. Jesus does not accept this
way of thinking; He does not accept vengeance (cf. Mt 5: 44-48) His new
experience of God the Father helped Him to understand better the meaning of the
prophecies.
Personal Questions
•
Jesus’ objective is to accept the excluded. Do
we accept everybody or do we exclude some? What are the reasons which lead us
to exclude certain people?
•
Is the mission of Jesus truly our mission, my
mission? Who are the excluded whom we should accept better in our community?
Who or what thing gives us the strength to carry out the mission entrusted to
us by Jesus?
Concluding Prayer
How I love Your Law, Lord! I ponder it
all day long. You make me wiser than my enemies by Your commandment which is
mine for ever. (Ps 119: 97-78)
